Jonas Salk REFUSED to Patent the Polio Vaccine

He could have become one of the richest men alive. He chose to make nothing.

In the 1950s, polio terrified America, paralyzing children and filling wards with iron lungs.

Parents kept children from pools, helpless against a virus no one could stop.

Jonas Salk, a son of immigrants, chased a vaccine the experts said could not work.

His method used a killed virus, which most scientists swore could never work.

He tested it on his own children first, then on more than a million others.

In 1955 the result came: the vaccine worked, and a terrified nation wept with relief.

Asked who owned the patent, he said the people did. Could you patent the sun?

He gave the vaccine to the world for free, walking away from a fortune.

Polio nearly vanished, and the man who could have owned it kept nothing but gratitude.

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